SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL 2006 - WRAP

LAUGHTER SANDWICH WITH MEATY FILLING
With this his second (and last) Festival, Artistic Director Lynden Barber has
again shown an astute ability to mix the provocative with the seductive, the
challenging with the entertaining, giving patrons a snapshot of the concerns and
amusements of filmmakers from around the world. Andrew L. Urban samples the
menu.

In a world troubled by violence, defeated by poverty, racked by intolerance and
engulfed in conflict, it’s appropriate that a major film festival such as
Sydney’s should gather films in which issues – ranging from climate change to
terrorism and socio-political friction – get a good airing. Nowhere was
this more evident than with An Inconvenient Truth (climate change), United 93
(terrorism) and Beyond Hatred (gay bashing). The first two are exemplary works;
Al Gore’s slide show presents a convincing argument, but director Davis
Guggenheim goes further and manages to make this slide show a decent doco,
peppered with intimate personal insights about the man once known as the “next
President”. The film won this year’s Urban Cinefile Audience Award for Best
Documentary – World Cinema. (See separate story on all the winners of the Urban
Cinefile Audience Awards.)

An Inconvenient Truth so stirred up the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the
US, it launched a TV ad campaign to counter the film’s message about the
imminent dangers of global warming, with a message to suggest that carbon
dioxide is good, promoting the benefits of greenhouse gas-producing fuels. “I
think it’s a good sign,” says Gore with confidence. “These commercials are
unintentionally funny. They’re financed by Exxon Mobil and I hope that over time
[the campaign] will be seen as one of their last gasps, but I can’t take that
for granted. The role of these naysayers that receive funding from the biggest
polluters on the planet has been a shameful one. Rather similar to what the
tobacco companies did in trying to confuse people for years into thinking that
doctors were still having a debate about whether smoking cigarettes causes lung
disease…”

United 93, while not a documentary, is a dramatised re-enactment, if that’s not
tautology, of the events on the fourth hijacked plane on September 11, 2001. It
hardly needs to be dramatised, after all. Director Paul Greengrass – an
Englishman – has a track record of making films about political violence (Bloody
Sunday, Omagh). Greengrass says his film is actually about “two hijackings that
took place that day: the one we know, the other is the hijacking of a religion,
through the selective quotes and omissions from the Koran. It’s a call to
sleeping Muslims … the purpose of these attacks is to radicalise all Muslims.”

Both these films will be released nationally later in 2006.

"cinematic context"

These films connect us to the global concerns of filmmakers and put their
work into cinematic context. Beyond Hatred, which does the same thing, is a
disappointing film precisely because the subject matter is so important.
Extremist right wing youth in Europe who are terrorising Arabs, gays and anyone
else that is different, are a symptom of a larger malaise, and while Olivier
Meyrou touches on those aspects, his film is often flabby, self indulgent and
undisciplined. It’s the story of a single case, a nasty killing in Reims a few
years ago, but it is still highly relevant. If only it were as effective as the
subject demands. (On the other hand, several people have expressed their
admiration for it…)

I am perhaps in the minority again with my reservations about Menhaj Huda’s
Kidulthood, which tackles the equally serious issue of teenage alienation, this
time in England. It’s as tough and relevant film, superbly performed and
directed with the fresh energy of An exciting new talent. My reservation is just
about the fact that I find much of the strongly accented and jargon-filled
dialogue incomprehensible, which is ironic because that’s exactly what young
British test audiences have responded to most.

Similarly with Rian Johnson’s Brick, which explores a related and also
contemporarily relevant topic: Johnson takes the film noir approach to
highschool drug dealing. Having won over the Sundance jury for Originality of
Vision, it arrives with high expectations. The film is certainly inventive and
well paced as a noir thriller should be. But Brick loses its grip as a result of
its impenetrable plot, although if I had heard more of the dialogue I may be
closer to loving it.

But no film festival program can please everyone 100%; this year’s theme was
‘Go Deeper’ – an invitation to audiences to explore the program and extend their
search for films that stretch their cinematic palates. And what better way to
begin such a program than with Ten Canoes (in cinemas June 29, 2006), a film set
in ancient Arnhem Land yet eschewing an earnest, anthropological approach, for a
humane and comedic look at the human condition through the eyes of the mob who
have called the place their local swamp for thousands of years. Not only does
the film take us deeper into the Aboriginal culture of the Ramingining people,
it does so in a surprisingly lighthearted, entertaining and accessible manner.

Lynden Barber has book-ended the Festival with a sublime contrast: the Closing
Night film, Thank You For Smoking, while also funny, is a fast, furious and
unfiltered satire about spin doctors in general, and a tobacco lobbyist in
particular. Not only are the cultures diametrically opposed, the two films are
obviously set at opposite physical extremes. Thank You For Smoking follows Jason
Reitman’s multi award winning short films, Consent and In God We Trust. His
writing is acerbic and he likes to score surprise goals in any direction, not
just for one editorial team.

"the Festival started and ended in laughter"

So the Festival started and ended in laughter, but the laughs sandwiched a
world full of pain and sorrow, not to mention love, betrayal and even period
kung fu – with Ronny Yu’s Fearless, starring Jet Li as a 19th century martial
arts legend, which received the Urban Cinefile Audience Award for Best Feature –
Sidebar Program.

With the Urban Cinefile Audience Award for Best Feature – World Cinema going to
Little Miss Sunshine, it’s tempting to speculate that festival audiences like to
be challenged, but they do prefer to be entertained, perhaps as a respite from
the troubled world. Little Miss Sunshine, a first feature from music video
making husband and wife team, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, is a road trip
with a dysfunctional family – but unlike the corny work you might expect from
such a scenario, this trip turns its American cultural propositions on their
head. Winning isn’t everything.